Who’s your daddy?
Creative Staff:
Story/Art: Tite Kubo
What They Say:
Ichigo Kurosaki never asked for the ability to see ghost – he was born with the gift. When his family is attacked by a Hollow- a malevolent lost soul – Ichigo becomes a Soul Reaper, dedicating his life to protecting the innocent and helping tortured spirits themselves find peace.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Bleach has been moving along at a decent enough clip recently as it’s felt like it’s narrowed its focus just a hair by ignoring some of the side plots that have been chugging along in this arc. With some of the characters in recovery mode and a couple of others paired up, it’s helped to winnow things down a bit – though there’s still plenty going on. This chapter opens up with Rukia and Renji arriving where the fight with Gerard is and taking in exactly what’s going on – all while playing along as to who Hitsugaya’s transformed mode really is. It’s simple silliness early on that helps provide a little lightness in an increasingly dark storyline as expected.
While we get a little time at the start seeing how Gerard has transformed once again and some of the standing around commentary and headshaking going on among the folks there, the bulk of the chapter – which goes by in a breeze – is focused on Ichigo and Yhwach. There’s the standard old school traditional face-off going here as Ichigo stares him down and makes it clear he won’t give any ground here and we get the nod from Yhwach that Ichigo has grown pretty well with his power. It’s not that he’s exceeded what he thought Ichigo would be at but rather that he’s finally hit where he should be, reinforcing once again that this is all to Yhwach’s plans. Or at least he wants us to believe that. The dynamic between the two is pretty decent to watch here and at least Kubo uses a lot of black ink to fill in the backgrounds so it’s not another whiteout fest.
Where a decent chunk of it focuses on is with Ichigo making his attack on Yhwach which results in the expected easy pushback. Kubo’s done some really good fight sequences over the years and there’s no denying it and this one is setting up to be the start of one if it has the time to develop. With some choice words tossed in to get Ichigo all riled up as Yhwach goes on about his mother and the truth of his being Ichigo’s father, you do get a bit frustrated by the fact that we’re almost 700 chapters into this series and Ichigo can still seemingly get all riled up by this after all that he’s faced. It’s the kind of thing that you know is hard to deal with but that the crucible he’s been in for years should have allowed him to get past that by now, at least at the opening stage of the fight.
In Summary:
Bleach has a solid chapter here with what it wants to do in moving things forward, though it’s more about putting us on the right stage when it comes to Ichigo v Yhwach. I’m actually more interested at the moment to see what’s going on with Gerard and the fight there because I really do want resolution for that with all that we’ve seen so far. And it’s just nice to see the familiar faces popping up there now that Rukia and Renji have arrived, making me hopeful for a greater reunion as they wrap that segment of things coming up.
So, what’s the over/under on this series finishing up by chapter 700?
Grade: C+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: Viz Media via Weekly Shonen Jump’s ComiXology Release
Release Date: May 16th, 2016
MSRP: $0.99
